The Kid Who Would Be King and Serenity both bomb at the box office
Glass shattered the competition at the box office this weekend while both new releases tanked.
The Kid Who Would Be King, 20th Century Fox's King Arthur-inspired family film, couldn't take the box office crown, making just $7.2 million in its debut and coming in fourth place, per Box Office Mojo. This was a catastrophic opening considering the film cost around $60 million to produce, Variety reports. The poor showing is surprising; critics found the movie to be solid kid-friendly entertainment, and it earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of 86 percent.
Critics were far less charitable toward Aviron Pictures' Serenity, a thriller starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway that made just $4.8 million. The movie received a Rotten Tomatoes score of 21 percent, with critics everywhere guffawing over its ridiculous plot twists and audiences giving it an average CinemaScore rating of D+.
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
To put both of these failures in perspective, neither of the new releases was able to make more money than Aquaman, which has now been out for six weeks and this weekend officially became the highest grossing D.C. comics film of all time. But it was Glass that came in first place for the second weekend in a row, making another $19 million. The M. Night Shyamalan trilogy-ender is currently just a few million dollars behind where Split was at this point in its run. It seems mixed-to-negative reviews were unable to break the film's box office prospects.
